a caravel of the Peninsular & Oriental
Company cheerfully accepts them. The "P. & O." line is one of Britain's
venerated institutions; consequently English people would as soon commit
a felony as criticize this antiquated concern. In these times ten-knot
passenger steamers are hard to find outside the Calcutta service of the
"P. & O." Company and in marine junk yards.

As a great commercial port, Calcutta is unfortunately located. It is on
the Hooghly river, one of the outlets of the sacred Ganges, and ninety
miles from its mouth. The Hooghly is a tortuous stream of mud that can
be navigated by large vessels only by daylight and with favoring
conditions of tide, for its channel is seldom two days alike. This
demands expert piloting, and explains why Hooghly pilots are selected
with great caution. A Hooghly pilot is the very maximum of a nautical
swell, and one's boarding of a ship attended by man-servant and a mass
of belongings partakes somewhat of the character of a function.

This Calcutta pilot is a fine fellow--well-bred, educated, and entitled
to the splendid compensation and social position which he enjoys. Since
the days of the East India Company, the forerunner of British rule in
India, the pilots of the Hooghly have been esteemed as personages and
they have taken rank but slightly lower than officers of the navy, and
much ahead of ordinary commercial people and mariners. When off duty in
Calcutta the pilot goes to his club and drives on the Maidan with other
Anglo-Indians of quality, and never is seen about hotel bars and cafes
like the ruck of seafaring men having a spare day on shore.

[Illustration: A CALCUTTA NAUTCH DANCER]

The Hooghly is charted practically every twenty-four hours, and on his
way upstream the pilot gets his information pertaining to depths and
bars by signals from stations on shore. The river presents nothing of
interest to the traveler until a point twenty miles from Calcutta is
reached; thereafter it is a stream of many attractions. Fortifications
with visible native troops and an occasional red-coated English soldier
occur frequently; then come scores of enormous cotton and jute mills,
attended by strange-looking stern-wheel steamboats, most of them with
huge cargo barges on either side. At last Calcutta is in sight. Tall
factory chimneys and domed public buildings pronounce it a city of size
and importance. The last two miles of the journey are made through a
flotilla of shipping,